Washington -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- A former employee of the National Archives was sentenced Thursday to 18 months in prison for stealing rare recordings from the government to sell on the Internet .

Leslie Waffen , 67 , of Rockville , Maryland , pleaded guilty in October to an eight-year scheme to embezzle historic recordings donated to the government in order to peddle them on eBay .

Among the items Waffen took was an original master copy of an interview with baseball great Babe Ruth conducted while he was quail hunting in New Jersey on December 10 , 1937 . Waffen sold it on eBay in September 2010 for a paltry $ 34.74 .

Law enforcement agents later recovered the audio recording , which was still in a paper sleeve marked with the number 2172 , its National Archives and Records Administration number .

Waffen stole numerous other items , including Herbert Morrison 's eyewitness report of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster , a September 1924 transcontinental defense test phone call and the first network television broadcast of the World Series in 1948 .

Investigators seized sound recordings during a search of Waffen 's home in 2010 . The government said 4,806 of those items were taken from the National Archives .

`` These items were entrusted to the National Archives to be used by all citizens , not to be auctioned for personal profit to the highest bidder , '' said Rod Rosenstein , the U.S. Attorney in Maryland .

The federal judge in Waffen 's case said losses from the scheme are calculated at $ 83,238 . Another hearing will be held on the matter of restitution .

Waffen worked at the National Archives from 1969 until June 2010 .

The government said that in the 1970s Waffen handled donations of more than 3,000 sound recordings made by a former radio engineer for CBS , NBC and the Mutual Radio networks .

That former radio engineer , J. David Goldin , told the Washington Post he saw the listing for the Babe Ruth hunting recording when he was searching the Internet in September 2010 .

Goldin said he almost bought the item , but realized it was a recording he had donated to the archives years before .

`` It was Ruth , and he certainly should have gotten a lot more than 34 bucks for it -- even if Ruth is blowing his nose , people will buy it , '' Goldin told the newspaper .

Goldin , a radio historian and collector , assisted law enforcement in its investigation of the stolen recordings .

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Former employee receives 18-month sentence

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Leslie Waffen sold a 1937 voice recording of Babe Ruth for $ 34.74 on eBay

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Waffen worked at National Archives and Records Administration for more than 40 years